Housing advocates laud eviction ban, but say rental assistance needed

LEWISTON — Housing advocates in Maine say now that a nationwide moratorium on evictions is in place, dedicated funding for rental assistance is crucial.

A day after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a halt on evictions, Craig Saddlemire, coordinator of the Raise-Op Housing Cooperative in Lewiston, said Congress must pass substantial rental assistance funding, which would benefit both tenants and landlords as they face mounting bills this winter.

He said the eviction freeze was a great step, and “way overdue” given dire warnings from housing and public health experts since the start of the crisis. But, he said, when the ban ends in December, tenants and landlords alike will be on the hook for months of rent and mortgage payments and other costs.

“That’s what needs to be coupled with this in order to prevent a more significant crisis,” Saddlemire said Thursday.

The federal eviction moratorium, issued by the CDC as a public health measure, bans landlords from evicting tenants who can’t afford to pay rent due to a pandemic-related hardship.

Evictions for reasons other than nonpayment of rent will still be allowed, but roughly three-quarters of eviction proceedings in Maine are due to nonpayment. The federal ban also stipulates that renters must also meet income standards, among other requirements.

Greg Payne, director of the Maine Affordable Housing Coalition, said it’s become clear through data collection and the organization’s own direct interviews with tenants across Maine that the current rental climate is unsustainable.

He said while data has shown that the majority of landlords have been receiving monthly rent payments during the pandemic, a series of interviews have shown that tenants are scraping by — unhealthily — to make the payments on time.

Payne said people are so panicked, they are skipping bills, draining savings accounts, taking out loans and other financially risky actions to avoid losing their housing during the pandemic.

“People are paying their rent, but the ways in which they are pulling it off are problematic and tenuous and unlikely to keep working for very much longer,” he said.

The announcement from the CDC on Wednesday came as the organization has been collecting data on evictions in Maine through each district court system — most of which is not readily available to the public.

The coalition plans to release in-depth figures on evictions during the first half of 2020 within the next few weeks. Payne said they ramped up research as they realized the severity of the issue, and wanted to get a “baseline” figure for evictions in Maine to be able to understand what figures mean for this year and beyond.

Lewiston district court, serving all of Androscoggin County, is the busiest eviction court in Maine.

Between 2015-2019, the Lewiston court saw a total of 4,608 filings, giving Androscoggin County the second highest five-year average of eviction filings — 922 compared to Cumberland County’s 932 — despite having less than half the number of rental households of Cumberland County.

Payne said he was “shocked” to see the announcement Wednesday regarding the freeze, but agrees that rental assistance funding must now be approved.

“It’s going to take a lot of the anxiety out of the equation for a whole lot of vulnerable renter households,” he said, but added, “It’s only one part of a two-part solution.”

The rent is still due, and landlords still need rent payments to pay mortgages, staff and other bills, he said.

Saddlemire said tenants he has talked to so far “are encouraged” by the ban. He’s hoping now that tenants have protections, it could get landlords nationwide to push for the financial resources needed for rental assistance.

Both Saddlemire and Payne pointed to the Heroes Act, passed by the Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives in June, that proposed $100 billion in rental aid, as a starting point for congressional discussions this fall. The measure has not been taken up in the GOP-controlled Senate.

“It’s going to be very important for Congress to pass rent relief as part of whatever they do next, assuming they do something,” Payne said.

Lincoln Jeffers, director of Economic and Community Development in Lewiston, said the city has not received much feedback yet following Wednesday’s directive, but he said there has been a “significant” uptick recently in requests for rent, mortgage or utility assistance with federal unemployment support largely gone.

The city used initial coronavirus relief funding to establish an emergency program that provides up to $1,000 per month for up to three months in rent payment or mortgage payment assistance for income-qualified households that have experienced “significant income losses attributable to COVID-19.” There is also up to $500 in assistance available to pay private sector utilities over the course of those three months.